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Welcome to FTC Team 542's page!

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The FIRST Tech Challenge is the missing link between FIRST's introductory FIRST LEGO League and the rather advanced FIRST Robotics Competition. That is to say, the new Tetrix system has incorporated many of the elements from both competitions, thus assimilating both positive and negative aspects of each.

Firstly, from FLL, the Tetrix platform inherited its factor of being a modular system. In the FTC competition, you are now allowed to use Tetrix, and to an extent, LEGO and VEX parts. Meaning that, yes, everything works together, but in limited ways. Simultaneously, it means that you have a greater choice of parts and the new Tetrix parts are much more reliable and stable. 

From FRC, FTC acquired an elevated level of team-participation by requiring an operator during matches. This means that the team's job isn't done on competition day, rather that their duties are more-or-less doubled on it. Additionally, the game itself is designed to resemble FRC games, or to at least be of the same genre. This means that the games are multi-dimensional, tactic-oriented rather than task-oriented, and overall rather difficult.

The final, and probably greatest factor, or FTC is something that it shares with all three divisions: the necessity for gracious professionalism. Now, this statement - at face value - seems hackneyed and rather superfluous, but it cannot be stressed enough. Team dynamics is an amazing factor in this competition. We have personally seen teams with decent robots, decent tactics, and decent techniques fail miserably due to poor team dynamics. And we have witnessed the exact opposite as well. In this competition, gracious professionalism isn't just politeness or some code of conduct. It is the external symptom of a team that doesn't want to win, but of a team that wants, yearns to just play the game and have fun, and learn while doing it. It is by far, in our short lifetime, one of the greatest human traits that can ever be witnessed. This is the ideal of FIRST.

This year, Face Off! has exemplified all of the classic FTC factors to a fault. As a team, we face one of the hardest games to date, but faith is with this team, and we are sure to do well. Wish us luck!